Home » Data and Projects » Country Implementations Overview » Iraq
Under USAID funding, IFES has worked with a spectrum of civil society organizations in Iraq to address systemic and symptomatic aspects of election violence. As a result of a close examination of the environment and careful planning, the EVER project developed a work methodology which has allowed it to vigorously pursue its objectives. Implementing EVER in Iraq presented immense challenges that required unique solutions as work is conducted in a volatile conflict environment, not a post-conflict environment. EVER is an Iraqi-led initiative; local staff trained by IFES international technical experts form the core leadership of EVER Iraq-wide. Fieldwork includes monitoring and corroborating reports of incidents of election violence, community outreach and education about violence mitigation, and capacity building of Iraqi CSOs. The EVER program, with participation of the CSOs who make up the Iraq Without Violence Network (IWV), facilitates first-time meetings between stakeholders in each governorate.
With EVER support, efforts to build local coalitions of stakeholders who are committed to reducing violence between participants in the electoral process are gaining momentum.
The IWV network consists of 84 NGOs from all 18 governorates of Iraq. The members of this network have been trained in election violence monitoring and conflict resolution in order to participate as monitors in the October and December elections and to begin to conduct bridge building activities with the various election stakeholders. Following the referendum and general elections, IWV held press conferences and produced a report on the results of their monitoring efforts for that election period. The monitoring of incidents of election related violence has allowed the members of the Iraq EVER team to identify trends and patterns in the violence: who is committing the violence, who are the victims, where it is being committed, and what type of violence is used. With this information, the Iraq EVER team has been able to bring various parties together and conduct bridge building workshops with them in an effort to reduce violence.
Methodological points for Iraq: Implementation began in November 2004 and monitoring was conducted through the January 30 elections, the October 15 constitutional referendum, and the December 15 general elections. The IFES Iraq EVER team includes international staff who provide technical leadership and continue to review reports from the monitoring work conducted by a large Iraqi staff. The monitoring team has included many volunteer monitors during (but not in-between) election periods. The volunteers are responsible for reporting on incidents of election violence which IFES staff review and, once verified, enter into the Global Database. A second round of review is conducted of the database incidents by Iraq and DC staff. In order to ensure accuracy, certain corroboration measures are required. For example, as in other implementations, a determinable location and a minimum of 2 sources are needed to show that the incident definitely took place. However, in Iraq, if one of the sources of information is either a media source or a second hand account, a third source that is neither a media source nor a second hand account is required.
IFES has experienced certain limits and constraints to its efforts to monitor and mitigate election related violence in Iraq, mainly due to the security situation. For example, IFES initially experienced difficulty in monitoring incidents in Al-Anbar governorate. For the January and October elections, IFES could not find any monitors for that region as they all feared for their lives. As a result of the slight improvement in the security situation of the region, IFES was able to identify IWV members in the region and begin to conduct monitoring for the December 15 elections as well as conduct bridge building activities. Additionally, while the majority of violence in Iraq is carried out by insurgent groups, IFES focuses on incidents that are perpetrated by other participants in the electoral process that IFES may be able to work with to reduce the violence. IFES is not in a position to reduce violence committed by the insurgent groups.
The incident form was that is used has evolved several times throughout the course of the EVER project in Iraq in order to better capture the information that will be most useful to IFES as well as to ensure consistency with the other EVER projects taking place around the world.